


Fulcrum

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, fic prompts, fic requests, post-IWTB, xf revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 12:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4746875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things he doesn’t know about her anymore. Like what color her loofa is or when she started eating veggie chips, judging from the sad bag in her shopping basket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fulcrum

He sees her at CVS and freezes, studying her a moment as she peruses the shampoo aisle. They’d both agreed to take some time apart; she’d moved out, taken her remarkably small amount of personal effects with her to a rental back in the city, and said she’d call him when she was ready. That was seven months ago. 

The red shopping basket dangles off her right wrist as she reaches up on tiptoe to pull down a bottle of Tresemme on the top shelf, too proud to ask for help. If her long, tan coat wasn’t covering her from shoulder to kneecap, he knows he’d see her tattoo peeking out from the top of her smart gray slacks. Is he the only person alive who knows that it’s there? God, how he hopes he is. 

He is about to approach her, to break their agreement, to offer his help, when a guy comes up from the other side and pulls the bottle down for her, giving her a warm smile and muttering a quiet sentence Mulder can’t make out from where he stands. She smiles, not with her teeth, but a real smile nonetheless, one that crinkles the corners of her eyes. “Thank you,” she says, and the guy nods and continues past her, twirling the black bottle of his own shampoo in his hand. Mulder can’t help but snort derisively as the man brushes past him. The guy’s young, maybe thirty, handsome with dark hair and eyes and skin and a neatly-trimmed beard. _”Most women are into that now, apparently,” he’d joked before they’d split; “Mulder you should know by now that I’m not most women.”_

He knows. God, how he knows. Or knew, he supposes. There are things he doesn’t know about her anymore. Like what color her loofa is or when she started eating veggie chips, judging from the sad bag in her shopping basket. 

Mulder is struck with the sudden urge to go home. He hastily returns to his search for the needlenose pliers he came for and heads to the checkout. He is proud of himself as he exits the store and the air of a cool October afternoon hits his face. She’ll talk when she’s ready, and he will wait. He’s waited much longer before. They both have.

“Mulder?” Her voice is behind him in the parking lot, hopeful and reticent in the same breath.

He turns, and she stands there in her camel-colored coat with the red shopping basket still in her hand, cheeks and nose slightly pink from the chill, and he knows that he will never stop loving her. 

“You cut your hair,” he observes, liking the way it bobs across her shoulders like in the old days. He hadn’t noticed in the store.

“Classic break-up move,” she self-deprecates. “I know.”

“Is that what we did?” he asks. “Broke up?”

“We did,” she sighs, with a nod that says she’s both happy and miserable at this fact. It does not seem like an evasion, rather a stream-of-consciousness question when she asks, “What are you doing in the city?”

“Had a meeting. Needed some pliers.” He holds up the white plastic bag and it rattles lifelessly in the wind. 

She purses her lips at the sudden burst of cold, then wets them once. He tries not to stare at her tongue as it darts out between her lips. “They don’t have pliers out in the boonies, huh?” she asks good-naturedly.

“Nary a one,” he says with a dramatic sigh. 

She smiles, like she’d smiled at the man in the CVS, but he feels like this one is different. Like it’s just for him. “Well if you ever need some, I do have a pair. I have two, actually. I could let you keep them.”

“But then I wouldn’t get to see you when I have to return them,” he points out, something in the brisk air making him bold like it had that night of the new millennium. 

She shoots him one of her affectionate admonishing looks. “Well how about this,” she posits, glancing disinterestedly in the direction of her car, “you come over to get them right now and we worry about returning them later.”

Something like hope swells in his chest, making it suddenly very hard to breathe. He does manage to say, however, “Yes, please.”

She offers him her hand, opening and closing her fingers against her palm twice, and leads him to her slate-colored sedan. It is only hours later, when she slides out from between the sheets and between his legs to take a shower, that he realizes his car has most likely been towed. He doesn’t give a fuck.


End file.
